The present invention relates to a selective calling display radio pager having a memory for storing a plurality of succesively received messages for later retrieval.
Recent advances in microelectronics have made possible the introduction of a large capacity memory into a compact radio pager at modest prices, allowing a great amount of information to be transmitted to the pager on a single call. Multiple messages can therefore be received in sequence and stored into different locations of a memory which can be respectively addressable. Since the amount of information that can be stored is finite, provisions must be made to give early warning to the paging user against the possible depletion of memory storage. A known prior art display pager includes an indicator which provides a display of the number of message entries already stored in memory. Another prior art pager provides a display of the number of characters already stored in memory.
However, the memory is configured so that its capacity is limited both by the amount of message entries and the amount of message segments or characters and these limiting factors vary with the number and length of each of the messages received. It is therefore desirable to selectively indicate one of the limiting factors which is more accurate than the other as an early warning indication.